


What a Mess

by Wanderlust_Novadust



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: (to an extent this is a season 3 rewrite), Autistic Ed, Autistic Oswald, Blood, Canon Divergence, Canon Divergent, Drugs, Gore, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Minor Character Death, Riddlebird but make it gayer, Season 3 rewrite, System Edward Nygma, Taking drugs to see your possibly dead ex, implied past sexual encounters, mild descriptions of gore, tags will be updated by chapter completion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:07:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26693446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderlust_Novadust/pseuds/Wanderlust_Novadust
Summary: If it was a riddle, it was a riddle he would solve. The man who was (surely, he must have been) Edward Nygma at one point never left a riddle unsolved! No puzzles left undone. No stone left unturned.What implications...What curiosity!What a mess.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot & Edward Nygma, Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma
Kudos: 31





	1. ...To be Perceived

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off an RP between my boyfriend and I we dropped? So if you really like the concept itself, you partially have him to thank. You can hit him up at @captainv1ktor on Tumblr if you want. Though it's all based off the RP, it is completely rewritten from it, and will (hopefully, if I finish this) go far beyond where we dropped it.

A man who was once Edward Nygma sat on the edge of the dining table. The old place felt musty with Oswald rotting at the bottom of the water deep, but that was all fine (or so he told himself.) He sniffled, waiting for the drugs to take effect and hoping to high hell that they were in any way helpful. He had heard about it before. Artists and musicians under the influence, producing alchemically engineered masterpieces in their fugue... This man has only hoped for the same in him. There was a part of him that wondered if this all could be considered "art" in it's own right, but he decided that if it did or it didn't, all that mattered was that it worked.

The cork board was barely set, pins and red string under it on a small table. The dark wood of that table was shiny, though not from any recent polish. A white board sat directly in front of this man who may have been Nygma, markers in the tray of it all various colors. He seemed to pick out the blues and purples, too reminded of Oswald by some loose connection (one which he was half sure was his own creation.) The foggy mindset and altered state (he hoped) would help him fill the both up with endless scrawlings and connections that would rend the conundrum he was trapped with into something that made sense. Obviously (as the pills kicked in,) this was a riddle. Edward Nygma (if he were he, or even if only pretending to be) would leave no riddle unsolved. It was not in his nature, his nurture, or any other theory of his birth.

"You really just can't live without me," it snarked.

Ed turned to see Oswald. Covered in seaweed and drenched to the bone, but dressed surprisingly comfortably.

"Oswald?"

It disappeared, reappearing in front of the whiteboard. Facing Ed still, hands clasped behind its back. "In the flesh! Or, whatever you might call this." It rolled on its heels, and Ed turned his head too late, losing it before it was seated next to him on the table. "What's all this? Plans to revive a bled and drowned man?"

"No," he replied, hesitant and shaking his head. He swallowed thickly. "I wanted to kill you for all the wrong reasons. You'll be back in at least a week anyway." He had to stop himself from chuckling. "They should have called you cockroach, instead of Penguin."

Oswald clapped his hands, bouncing just a bit with a plastered on grin as he looked up at Ed. "Well, isn't that nice. You know me, the one that's alive? Is that what you plan to tell him?"

Ed swallowed again. "That's the thing. I don't know what to do with you in the first place."

Being a figment of a man who seemed to be Edward made this easier. It was of his mind, no matter his ebbing perception of him. _"It,"_ or _"him,"_ or _"real,"_ or _"unhelpful fake."_ So with the gift of this insight, Oswald managed an actual smile. This man who thought himself to be not Edward Nygma needed guidance. This would all make sense by the end (as neatly wrapped up as though it had been planned... Wouldn't that have been fun? If this were all a game by Edward's own hand, wouldn't that be fun? There was a part of Oswald, ripped from some even stranger part of this man who needed to be Edward's mind, and it thought of this all as a game by Oswald's hands. Did he orchestrate this? Heavens no. But did Edward know? Ed wasn't sure what he did and he didn't, not in the moment, and not anymore.)

"Well, I certainly never took the great Edward Nygma for someone to leave something unsolved!"

"Right," Ed replied. (Was he Ed anymore?)

Oswald expected Ed to hop to it, but no. Ed just wrung his hands and stared at the whiteboard, refusing to look at the hallucination anymore. So Oswald vanished, appearing again leaned against the whiteboard with one hand on his hip. Ed's eyes followed, brow furrowed and confused look in his eyes.

"Think of it like a riddle, Ed. That's how you work best," it encouraged.

So Ed nodded, getting up and shuffling over to the board. There was something about him that resembled a child called up to the blackboard, and Oswald supposed that made him the teacher. It was a child not confident they knew the answer, having to present their messy attempt in front of everyone else. Everyone else? There was nobody here, but things moved along. The music never stopped during the ball, after all, and the show must go on. Ed picked out the black marker, and the squeak as he worked the cap off of it felt too loud. It felt like that sound alone could consume the entire room. (In some mildly separate place from the man who might've wanted to be Nygma, the illusion of Oswald felt a twinge of guilt for the beginning hostility. Ed was not himself, that much had become apparent... He was in no state to be goaded or prodded and probed.)

"You're confounding as you are necessary. I think the crux of issue is, Oswald, that you were right." He doodled little question marks into the board as he spoke. "There is no Edward Nygma without Oswald Cobblepot."

Oswald shifted, watching him draw. "Then the solution would be simple, wouldn't it?"

"I wish," he said, shaking his head. "But you are equal parts Oswald and Penguin. They aren't separate people, but they are separate enough. You aren't the kinder man who was elected major when you're handling business."

Oswald watched him sketch in a little penguin. "So what you mean to say is that you are...?"

He added a little top hat and cane. It felt right. "There is no Edward Nygma without Oswald Cobblepot. So who exists to counterbalance the Penguin? And who exists now, in both of their absence?"

Ed closed the marker, slowly becoming less solemn. The question escaped him, and it gave the man who wanted to be someone like Edward a burst of energy. Picking up the green one, he uncapped it and jotted that riddle down. It was the question that needed answering. Oswald would applaud him for the strides if he didn't know this was only the start of this journey (and that it was a journey Ed might take alone.) With one question down, Ed jotted down an answer. Obviously, in the presence of Cobblepot, Nygma existed.

"Perhaps, Dear, what you need is just a persona?" Oswald wouldn't get into it now; obviously when Oswald or Penguin were completely removed from Edward, they did not vanish (this meaning Edward did not vanish removed from them in turn.) It wasn't the time. It would fall in deaf ears.

"A persona!"

His handwriting always did fall apart when proper inspiration struck. Scribbles of words would be unreadable to another. Only the man and his not-there would understand what was squealed out across the board. Components of Oswald, components of the man he was not too sure he was, and to top it all off: components of the man Penguin was.

"They compliment each other," Ed muttered in a shaking voice.

"Couples often do," Oswald replied, strolling out from behind the side of the whiteboard (opposite to where he was prior.)

Ed practically flung himself to follow the motion, the stride and the pride that exuded from its gait. In a flurry of smoke and nonsense coated purple, it was gone. Spinning around again, Ed saw him laid out in the table. He had to bite back the urge to make a Titanic joke, with it propping its head up on one arm and other leg bent up. He had to bite his tongue harder to not say that it was too lewd for the moment. Too flirtatious. Maybe it had it's purpose? Who was he to know? He was hardly Edward, anymore.

"Couples?" He didn't intend disgust. Just confusion.

Giving Ed the benefit of the doubt, Oswald smirked, eyes all drenched in sarcasm. "Did the nights we spent together mean nothing to you? Or did you just think flirting and sleeping together were totally platonic activities?"

Nothing about those nights were platonic, from either of them. Ed didn't answer, however, so Oswald went on. Without a verbal answer though, Oswald was wearing a smile from Cheshire! It knew exactly what Ed was keeping locked up, and that almost got Ed breaking out into a nervous sweat alone. Who was Ed afraid would see? The father who called men faggots, some twenty-something years in his past? What a silly little man! What a curious little creature. What a messy human being...

"It's cute you think you can lie to something literally from the inside of your head. Though, from what I can tell, I'm not the only one you've been lying to."

Ed wished Oswald looked less proud. "I can fill a room, or just one heart. Others may have me, but I cannot be shared."

Oswald cocked his head. "Love, again?" It laughed. "Or did you mean loneliness? Love solves that, doesn't it?"

Ed was three shades too red. There was a part of him that wanted to cry out about how that wasn't the answer (and maybe throw a bit of a fit,) but then he realized. Love was a riddle. Oswald quirked a brow at the manic expression Ed was wearing, giggling like a school girl who found out how much her crush liked her. The way he shook--was Ed alright?

The previous clutter of letters and the words they formed on the board was completely discarded, for now. Ed threw it back, watching the double sided thing spin and spin, before landing where he needed it. The blank side. He didn't write the riddle itself (as Oswald curiously noted) but he did write that love was a riddle. Romantic, sexual, platonic--as if to be thorough, he wrote every type of love down he could think of. Rattling off traits of each, however, he found himself erasing each except for romantic and sexual. Stumbling back just a bit, his knees hit the table. The man who wanted to be Ed had to stop, for fear of falling flat on his ass back onto the tabletop. For fear of being too close to Oswald. Regardless, he observed the chicken scratch that held the secrets--it must have. Romantic and sexual, all directed at him. All muddled and confused, a riddle in need of solving. A riddle, like him?

What implications...

What curiosity!

What a mess.

Oswald nodded a few times, not sure what to make of it all. Was this good progress? Bad? Had he somehow made this man who might need to be Ed worse?

It didn't matter so much as Ed got a notepad out of his pocket. He jotted down riddles and ideas for them, wild eyed and frantic. If this man was Edward Nygma, a persona, or someone entirely unrelated: it did not matter. The game was set. The rules had begun. And, oh, Eddie dearest...

He was in love.


	2. ...To Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How absolutely exhausting it must be, to know the answers to a riddle that answers another when you don't know what it means. How absolutely frustrating, surely, to need to hear it from someone else just for it to make sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this confusing and clunky? Because I hope it vibes right.

"Surely, you can answer a simple riddle," the man who was once Ed growled through grit teeth.

The therapist he held to a shotgun appointment shook their head. "I don't know, the answer--I-" they sputtered.

"You can see me in silver, but I'm gone in a crowd! What am I," he asked, perhaps a bit too loudly.

"I..." The therapist was tearing up, focused on the gun Ed was holding. "Please don't shoot me," they pleaded.

Ed rolled his eyes, the familiar click filling the air. The signal this was going somewhere bad very, very fast. A scream erupted from his uncooperative hostage, and he huffed with this great annoyance.

"Wrong."

Their brains painted the wall with a lovely red picture. The cops would be on his tail at any minute, and he didn't feel like wasting time. A riddle game with Jim would be fun, but that was for Edward (or who ever he would be) to do, not he. So he packed up and left in a flash, not bothering with the body, but not caring either way.

It was all wrong anyway.

When he shuffled through the door of (the likely not-late) Penguin's estate, he made a beeline for the dining room. (Could you call it a dining room anymore, with all of Ed’s repurposing?) The photo of the therapist he had hoped to help him got scratched out with a pocket knife--a big 'x' to mark the spot of his resentment. Popping out the pin, wrapping up the string; he wasted precious time, he mulled it all over again.

Love is a riddle, and he needed to solve it.

He set the messy ball of red string down, swinging by the end table and grabbing the pills again. Ed swallowed them dry before standing in front of the board, setting the rest aside for his markers. The whimsy of everything he’d hoped for was lost. Going off on crime riddled adventure was dampened severely by his riddles not being answered.

"Again," Oswald asked. Ed should have expected it.

"That was quick," Ed commented.

Oswald shrugged, leaned up against the board, arms crossed this time. "What this time, old friend?"

"The therapist was useless," Ed began. "The riddles they did answer, they got wrong. The riddles they didn't answer were the most important."

 ~~Why answer them if Ed had the answer? Why not make a normal appointment, instead of holding them at gun point?~~ Oswald was confused, but supportive. "Throw one of them at me, Ed."

"You can see me in silver, but I'm gone in the crowd... What am I?"

Oswald clicked his tongue, glad to be a part of Ed's mind. "I think a reference to silver in mirrors might be a bit obscure, don't you think?"

Ed huffed, rolling on his heels. He swung his arms back and forth a few times, hesitating at the peaks of the movement. Oswald watched him, heard no retort, and decided it was as good a time as any to continue.

"What you are more literally referring to is a face, but what you want the answer to be is identity, isn't it?"

Ed paused, writing it all down on the whiteboard in pretty, red ink. "Identity," he repeated aloud as he let the words on the board spray paint themselves in neon on his grey matter.

It shuffled, appearing next behind the man who could've been Ed. On the table, Oswald crossed his legs, planting one hand on the table and leaning on that arm. "Is identity something you really see as so fragile?"

"I don’t know. Maybe I knew at one point, but it’s always been tricky... Perception of the self, I mean."

Oswald shrugged. "Fair enough."

Ed continued, "I never thought I would need it until now."

"Well, if building a persona from the ground up is what you want, I may be of some assistance." ~~_He didn’t have to._ Ed was already perfect as he was, but if this was the rabbit hole they were going down...~~

Ed turned to Oswald, big smile full of life. "I would love that!"

"You like riddles," Oswald started.

"Liking riddles isn't a personality trait," Ed retorted, sarcastic and disdainful.

"Who told you that? What people like can very well be a part of them, and you wanted identity, didn't you? It's part of you."

Ed nodded a few times... He made a little column to list it all out. With this personal list of traits ready to be started, he noted a liking for riddles and puzzles. All in red. He really liked red, at the moment... He wrote that down, too.

"You're a natural already!"

Ed wrote that down.

"Don't write that," Oswald had to put forth the effort not to laugh.

Ed... Swiped his sleeve over that, getting rid of it in a messy, crimson smudge. Oswald chuckled a bit, watching Ed squint at the board. Surely, Ed could think of something for himself?

In silence, Oswald extended another answer. "You're passionate."

"I'm a riddle too," Ed said suddenly, as though he hadn't heard Oswald.

Oswald gestured with an open palm, nodding a few times. The slap as it hit his leg again, it was the loudest sound in the room. Everything was so loud here. "An example of your passion!"

It cocked its head just a bit to the left as it watched Edward write that down. No, Ed was not writing that he was passionate, like Oswald would have hoped. He wrote that he was a riddle, which Ed of course then drew an arrow to the prior note of liking riddles. It struck Oswald that they'd jumped around quite a bit, hadn't they?

"I was under the impression, Ed," it began, tracking his wrist as he kept writing, "that the riddle was something about love, and the me that you tried to kill."

He nodded, not turning to acknowledge Oswald. "Right. The answer is the answer to the other answer."

Oswald... Hesitated. "Which is?"

The marker was slammed shut, dropped hastily into the whiteboard's tray. Ed looked over his conclusions and contusions upon the board, wanting to put a hand against them. He only didn't for fear he'd make another mess.

"The answer I need first is who exists with Penguin. The next, who exists in their absence. And from there, I'll know how to handle you. Loneliness is a riddle too, and I'll..."

Oswald nodded once to the board, sounding equal parts hopeful and worried. "Solve it?"

"Solve it," the man who could be Ed responded rather confidently.

"And what then," Oswald questioned. "What exactly will solving this all mean?"

"Hopefully, that we will be together," Ed said with a huff. "But any answer is an answer."

It took a deep breath. "Yes, that is... The definition of an answer."

Ed beamed, not catching his concern. It wouldn't have mattered to him much anyway. Leaning over and pulling string to another photo on his cork board, trying to make a choice. Oswald watched, curiouser and curiouser. Ed drew it to an artist, looped around the pin in the photo. But then he let it all unspool back into his hand.

"Indecisive?"

"A bit," Ed muttered.

"If... Someone to be alongside Penguin is what you want," Oswald began, having switched places again. It took Edward's hand, guiding him by the wrist gently to the photo of the man he seemed helpful. "Perhaps someone used to rooting through heads is what you need?"

His eyes went wide. "Jervis Tetch?"

It shrugged. "Do you have any better ideas?"

"None too rational," Ed agreed.

He wrapped the red string in a few loops around the pin in the photo. It was honestly just one he had out for some worst case scenario he might encounter, but the surreal was becoming very familiar these days. So he'd make plans, to try and see Tetch. He'd be breaking into Blackgate, or was it Arkham? Ed didn’t keep up with the news of who was where, no anymore. The research could happen another night.

"Thank you, Oswald."

But when he looked where the drug phantom of Oswald was, it was gone. Ed turned slowly, looking over his shoulder and all around the dining room. There was only one light on, a lamp between his boards. Ed felt desperately alone, especially in the dark. He shivered as the cold of the unheated space slapped his nerves across the face, stumbling and shuffling to the door.

He needed rest, before anything else could begin.


	3. ...To Exist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then there were two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a shorter update, sorry! I had ideas and scenes and I just had to get them out.

The man who may have been Edward Nygma splashed water in his face. Placing his hands on the sides of the sink, looking up into the mirror, he felt half crazy. Only half. Him? Crazy? Never. The way the word was used these days was hardly correct, anyway.

"But you've gotta admit," his reflection began. "You don't have all your screws tightly secured right now."

Ed groaned in annoyance. "I thought you were gone."

His reflection cocked its head, humming as though he were considering it. It clicked its tongue afterward, smiling at Ed with something between malice and endearment. "No idea who you mean."

"Eddie, the one who liked murder, the damn alter who ran me in circles with Kristen's body!"

"Oh, him? Not me."

Ed stated in disbelief. So it kept talking. "No, I'm new."

"Oh," Ed breathed, rolling his eyes. "You're new."

"Yes, I am," it replied, not a twitch of change to its demeanor. "Maybe if you stopped stressing yourself out, you wouldn't split a new you."

"First of all, not how that works. Second of all, what?"

"A new you. It was a joke on your little quest."

Ed shook his head slowly. "Oh. Oh, no, no, no..."

"Actually, yes, yes, yes," it replied, nodding in time.

"No, no, no, no!"

"Uh... Yes, yes, yes, yes?"

Ed had to restrain himself from punching the mirror. "You? You exist where Oswald does not?"

His apparent new alter pretended to mull it over, again. "Who exists in Penguin's place and all of that? Maybe. All I know is that you have no idea what you're doing."

"What?"

"The riddles," it shouted. "They're terrible! You seriously need an editor. And a show runner, actually... You have zero flair."

Ed took a deep breath, exhaling with the weight of ten men. The alter just quirked its brow, leaning over to watch as he left. "Hey, where are you going?"

But then the door slammed.

"You know I'm not literally tied to your mirror," it asked. "Or, his mirror."

Ed practically jogged into the dining room, looking at his cork board. Jervis. He needed to put the plan into motion, he needed to get a move on, and he... Well, hopefully he and Oswald would make up while Penguin and whoever he would have fell in love.

"This would've been way easier if you accepted the fact you're into men a lot sooner."

"Shut up."

And it did, just this once.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna scream at me about writing, you can find me on my main tumblr @wanderlust-novadust  
> If you are curious what I draw these days, you can find my art on my Newgrounds (Wanderlust Novadust) or my art blog @art-of-the-nomad (where I'm more active.)


End file.
